16-nW 0.5-V low-pass filter for bio-signal applications

A low-voltage, ultra-low power fully differential low-pass filter for bio-signal applications using multiple-input fully differential operational transconductance amplifiers (OTA) is presented in this article. The multiple inputs of OTA can be achieved using multiple-input dynamic threshold MOS transistor (MIDT-MOST) technique. The novelty of this work is to exhibit the proposed filter using multiple-input OTAs, which leads to a reduction in the number of active OTAs and power consumption. The fourth-order low-pass filter that is cascaded by two second-order filters has been presented. The fourth-order low-pass filter is designed and simulated in the Cadence environment using the 0.18 μm CMOS technology from TSMC at a supply voltage of 0.5 V. The simulation results show that the filter consumes 16 nW of power at a bandwidth of 110 Hz, has a total harmonic distortion (THD) of 1 % at 204.96 mV input amplitude, and provides dynamic range of 69.24 dB. These results indicate that the proposed low-pass filter can be applied to bio-signal processing applications.